Labeling emotions is a skill that I never developed as a child. When I was growing up, everything was labeled under their big umbrella terms: hate, love, fear, anger, happy, etc.

Since deciding to live in a Power Exchange relationship and to embrace Polyamorous love styles, it’s important to learn the emotions that are nuances of the bigger umbrella emotions. This takes skill and time and dedication.

Why do I bring this up? Because after all these years, it would be nice to be better at this. I had a moment just before my weekend conference where I was triggered with a feeling and the only thing I could think to label it as was ‘hurt’. But, even when I was writing the person about how I was feeling, I had to put a question mark after ‘hurt’...and then wondered through typing, if it was actually ‘jealousy’ or ‘envy’, but had to put question marks after those as well.

It wasn’t until attending a workshop on Saturday at the Winter Wickedness event here in Columbus, OH that I discovered a word that felt better. It was a poly workshop by Cunning Mynx and someone brought up the word, ‘insecure’. Hah! That’s what the label was that I was looking for!

And this is why labels in general can be beneficial tools for me. Now that I know what it is, I can work on demantleing it, breaking it apart. ‘Hurt’?, ‘Jealous’?, and ‘Envious’? I can’t work with, because they have question marks. Insecure, I can work with logically, which helps me work through it emotionally at some point.